He noted that opposition had increased in the run-up to January’s planned vote in the US Congress on two legislative initiatives -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) -- aimed at increasing the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet; in the end the vote had not been held, following a hostile campaign by social networks and the loss of White House support.
It's interesting to see De Gucht linking the growing hostility to ACTA with the storm generated by SOPA/PIPA, and giving the credit for stopping those US bills to a "hostile campaign" waged by social networks. You can tell this really worries him, because he says something similar about social networks and ACTA immediately afterwards: